On-Demand Reading and Writing

On Demand Reading and Writing--It's real world.

Think about the type of writing you do every day. Much of what we do is short on-demand types of reading and writing: surfing the Internet, emails, notes, teacher newsletters, teacher lessons, etc. Students need opportunities to read and write on-demand as much as possible.

It's not all stories--It's unique formats.

Students will see both literature and informational texts on the typical reading test. To help students learn about and understand different formats, consider routinely exposing students to a variety of text types in both fiction and nonfiction on a routine basis.

It's not just a text--It's multiple texts.

Along with varying the text types, you will need to ask your students to read multiple texts in one sitting. This, again, is a real-world reader habit. Here is an example of what we might do with multiple texts. When a snow storm comes to our area, we might:

• View a weather report on television.
• Surf the Internet for the latest information. 
• Read the newspaper.

We tend to seek information from multiple texts about a single topic, and we do this all in one sitting, so it is important for students to have these experience routinely in the classroom.

The traits are important--It's Ideas and Organization

For on-demand writing, students have to start and finish their written responses to standardized prompts/questions all in a single draft. For that reason, the traits of Ideas and Organization are essential for students to practice when completing on-demand writing.

The students are expected to write with coherence and cohesiveness. "Coherence," meaning that it's on topic, well thought out, and easy to follow. "Cohesive," meaning that it's complete, with all parts of the prompt addressed in a beginning, middle, and end. The traits of Ideas and Organization encompass these expectations. If students are strong with their Ideas and Organization traits, they will perform better on standardized writing prompts and with other similar writing tasks.

Since on-demand writing doesn't allow time for major revision and editing, students may not always have time to incorporate the traits of voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions completely. Their first priority should be to get their ideas down with strong organization then go back and for revision and editing when time allows. 

It's a yearlong expectation.

If we truly believe that on-demand reading and writing skills are essential for real-world literacy, then weaving opportunities for on-demand activities is a must during the entire school year.

(Smekens, 2015)